So long Julius C. Wilkie

It appears Winona’s faux-steamboat era is just about over. The council has decreed that by July 25 the rotting hulk at the foot of Main Street will be the stuff of failed dreams and bad memories. Built on the cheap to the specifications of a rich man with more ego than sense of history, Winona has struggled with the Disneyfied riverboat replica for two decades. Too small for a museum, too inauthentic for a historic replica, it had no kitchen to support a restaurant, a dining room tarted up like the parlor of a Victorian bordello with a floor that canted enough to make a sober man unsteady. The only good thing to be said for it was that, at a distance, it looked pretty there at the foot of Main Street, reminding residents and visitors that behind the concrete sea-wall that keeps the city’s feet dry during times of high water flows the Mississippi River – “C’mon down and take a look.”

It was past time for the city to be done with this misbegotten building, but with the flood control dikes between the river and the city, the pre-1965 version of Levee Park is not up for resurrection. We’d be world-class stupid to do anything to jeopardize the city flood control system -- a system that has withstood near record high water twice in recent memory while communities elsewhere along the Mississippi were inundated.

But the Wilkie did look nice perched up there on the levee -- particularly in the winter when snow blanketed the worst of the decay and cold kept folks from coming close enough to see what shape it really was in. It is a wise move for the City Council not to prematurely demolish the hull-shaped foundation and reflecting pool or remove the utility hook-ups that powered the steamboat before it finally ran out of steam.

Let me offer a modest proposal... Send a bright young scholar -- an unemployed historian would be well-suited and likely willing to work on the cheap -- equipped with a notebook and tape measure to record the dimensions of the concrete hull. Then send that scholar off to research the river-packets that plied the Upper Mississippi, calling at the ports of La Crosse, Red Wing, Wabasha and Winona with the goal of identifying a boat whose hull was a close approximation of the concrete foundation there atop the levee. Let’s locate the construction plans for that boat -- or a sister vessel -- and reconstruct her on dry land as a historically accurate recreation. Refit her as she would have appeared to the immigrants, travelers and merchants who trod her decks and relied on her as a vital link to the world beyond the Mississippi valley.

But let’s do it right this time. Let’s not try to turn it into a restaurant -- everybody knows Winona won’t support a nice restaurant anyway, so why would an eatery crammed into building of unsuitable size and shape, in an inconvenient location be any different.

Let’s not try to turn it into a conference center. In this town, Mike Rivers, not the Mississippi River has that niche covered and, considering the 20-year track record of the Wilkie, does a much better job of it.

And let’s not try to do it overnight, on the cheap. The levee isn’t going anywhere -- if it does, we’ll have a lot more serious problems to deal with than what to do with a fake riverboat. For the time being, preserve the Pearson’s paddle wheel with a commemorative plaque detailing the sad story of the poor old boat and its successor. Put a couple umbrella tables up on the patio, let the folks from the Winona Island Cafe set up a snack and soda pop kiosk and make the area as pleasant and attractive as we can while we turn our attention to a lasting solution, worthy of the time, effort, and locale.

Putting up an accurate replica will take time for research and planning. Recreating a structure that is historically authentic in feel and appearance, but also in compliance with contemporary building codes, safety standards and accessibility requirements will require the services and imagination of creative and experienced designers and architects, working in cooperation with historically knowledgeable scholars. It will take time and money to acquire the artifacts and furnishings needed to bring the replica boat to life.

And building and furnishing will only be the first step. While we plan for construction, we also need to plan for what we will do with the thing once it’s up there. How will we coordinate the steamboat center with the William Thompson on exhibit at the Marine Art Museum, with the Winona County Historical Society’s downtown Armory Museum, the Bunnell House, Watkin’s Museum, Polish Cultural Institute, the Luxembourger museum in Rollingstone, the Arches Museum of Pioneer Life and tours of Winona’s historic architectural districts? The riverboat center needs to be viewed and funded as one piece of a much larger historic panorama. To expect it to be financially self-supporting as a stand-alone enterprise or attraction would likely doom it to failure, so establishing either a trust fund sufficient to assure adequate upkeep and maintenance or a cooperative financial relationship with other area tourist and historic attractions needs to be established.

Let’s take the Wilkie for what it was ... a hard lesson in how not to do things. This time, let’s take the time, do the planning, raise the funds and, sometime in the future, create an attraction we can be proud of for generations.

We can do this. Let’s do it right.

Contact Jerome Christenson at (507) 453-3500 or jchristenson@winonadailynews.com. For Jerome’s comments on this, that and something else check out “Up on the wrong side of the bed” at www.rivervalleyblogs.com/jerome/ or go to www.winonadailynews.com.